Vocational Guidance for Girls by Marguerite Stockman Dickson

109 Pages·2021·8.74 MB·English

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vocational Guidance

for Girls, by Marguerite Stockman Dickson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Vocational Guidance for Girls
Author: Marguerite Stockman Dickson
Release Date: April 9, 2005 [eBook #15595]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS***

E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Jeannie Howse,

and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

(https://www.pgdp.net)

OTHER VOCATIONAL
GUIDANCE BOOKS

J. Adams Puffer, Editor

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE—THE TEACHER AS A COUNSELOR

By J. Adams Puffer

A VOCATIONAL READER

By C. Park Pressey

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR THE PROFESSIONS

By Edwin Tenney Brewster

"Vocational guidance seeks the
largest realization of the possibilities
of every child and youth, measured

in terms of worthy service."

Photograph by Brown Bros.

Camp Fire Girls
The lessons of patriotism, kindness, and industry taught
by the Camp Fire Girls' organization make it a power
for good

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS

By

MARGUERITE STOCKMAN DICKSON

Author of "From the Old World to
the New," "A Hundred Years of
Warfare. 1689-1789," "Stories of
Camp and Trail," "Pioneers and

Patriots in American History"

RAND McNALLY & COMPANY

Chicago New York

1919

THE CONTENTS

PAGE

A Foreward
ix

PART I PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD

CHAPTER

I. Woman's Place In Society
3

II. The Ideal Home
18

III. Establishing A Home
27

IV. Running The Domestic Machinery
49

PART II. GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL

V. The Educational Agencies Involved
75

VI. Training The Little Child
86

VII. Teaching The Mechanics Of Housekeeping
102

VIII. The Girl's Inner Life
122

IX. The Adolescent Girl
130

X. The Girl's Work
151

XI. The Girl's Work (Continued)—Classification Of Occupations
163

XII. The Girl's Work (Continued)—Vocations As Affecting Homemaking
194

XIII. The Girl's Work (Continued)—Vocations Determined By Training
203

XIV. Marriage
218

Suggested Readings
241

The Index
243

A LIST OF THE PORTRAITS

PAGE

Louisa M. Alcott
221

Ruth McEnery Stuart
223

Louise Homer And Her Family
225

Margaret Junkin Preston
227

Colonel And Mrs. Roosevelt With Members Of Their Family
229

Julia Ward Howe And Her Granddaughter
231

Caroline Bartlett Crane
233

Alice Freeman Palmer
235

Amelia E. Barr
237

A FOREWORD

Fortunate are we to have from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a book on the vocational guidance of girls. Mrs. Dickson

has the all-round life experiences which give her the kind of training needed for a broad and sympathetic approach to
the delicate, intricate, and complex problems of woman's life in the swiftly changing social and industrial world.

Mrs. Dickson was a teacher for seven years in the grades in the city of New York. She then became the partner of a

superintendent of schools in the business of making a home. In these early homemaking years there came from the pen
of Mrs. Dickson a series of historical books for the grades which have placed her among the leading educational writers
of the country. During the long sickness of her husband she filled for a while two administrative positions—homemaker
and superintendent of schools.

Her three children are now in high school and are beginning to plan for their own life work. With the broad training of

homemaker, wife, mother, teacher, writer, and administrator, Mrs. Dickson has the combination of experiences to
enable her to introduce teachers and mothers to the very difficult problems of planning wisely big life careers for our
girls.

The book is so plainly and guardedly written that it can also be used as a textbook for the girls themselves in

connection with civic and vocational courses. The only difficulty with the book for a text is that it is so attractively
written on such vital problems that the student will not stop reading at the end of the lesson.

J. Adams Puffer

"Vocational guidance has for its
ideal the granting to every individual
of the chance to attain his highest
efficiency under the best conditions
it is humanly possible to provide."

PART I

PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD

"How to preserve to the individual
his right to aspire, to make of
himself what he will, and at the same
time find himself early, accurately,
and with certainty, is the problem of
vocational guidance."

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS

CHAPTER I

Woman's Place In Society

Any scheme of education must be built upon answers to two basic questions: first, What do we desire those being

educated to become? second, How shall we proceed to make them into that which we desire them to be?

In our answers to these questions, plans for education fall naturally into two great divisions. One concerns itself with

ideals; the other, with methods. No matter how complex plans and theories may become, we may always reach back to
these fundamental ideas: What do we want to make? How shall we make it?

Applying this principle to the education of girls, we ask, first: What ought girls to be? And with this simple question

we are plunged immediately into a vortex of differing opinions.

Girls ought to be—or ought to be in the way of becoming—whatever the women of the next generation should be.

So far all are doubtless agreed. We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of restating the question, making it:
What ought women to be?

Probably never in the world's history has this question occupied so large a place in thought as it does to-day. In

familiar discussion, in the press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an all-absorbing topic. Even the
most cursory review of the literature of the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also into the very
heart of controversy.

ToC

Photograph by Brown Bros.

Suffrage parade in Washington. Women will parade or even fight for
their rights

It is safe to say that no woman, in our own country at least, escapes entirely the unrest which this controversy has

brought. Even the most conservative and "old-fashioned" of women know that their daughters are living in a world
already changed from the days of their own young womanhood; and few indeed fail to see that these changes are but
forerunners of others yet to come. They know little, perhaps, of the right or wrong of woman's industrial position, but
"woman in industry" is all about them. They perhaps have never heard of Ellen Key's arraignment of existing marriage
and sex relations, but they cannot fail to see unhappy marriages in their own circle. They may care little about the
suffrage question, but they can hardly avoid hearing echoes of strife over the subject of "votes for women." And
however much or little women are personally conscious of the significance of these questions, the questions are
nevertheless of vital import to them all.

The "uneasy woman" is undeniably with us. We may account for her presence in various ways. We may prophesy the

outcome of her uneasiness as the signs seem to us to point. But in the meantime—she is here!

Naturally both radical and conservative have panaceas to suggest. The radicals would have us believe that the

question of woman's status in the world requires an upheaval of society for its settlement. Says one, the "man's world"
must be transformed into a human world, with no baleful insistence on the femininity of women. It is the human qualities,
shared by both man and woman, which must be emphasized. The work of the world—with the single exception of
childbearing—is not man's work nor woman's work, but the work of the race. Woman must be liberated from the
overemphasized feminine. Let women live and work as men live and work, with as little attention as may be to the
accident of sex.

Says another, it is the ancient and dishonored institution of marriage which must feel the blow of the iconoclast.

Reform marriage, and the whole woman question will adjust itself.

Says still another, do away with marriage. "Celibacy is the aristocracy of the future." Let the woman be free forever

from the drudgery of family life, free from the slavery of the marriage relation, free to "live," to "work," to have a
"career." Men and women were intended to be in all things the same, except for the slight difference of sex. Let us
throw away the cramping folly of the ages and let woman take her place beside man.

Not so, replies the conservative. In just so far as masculine and feminine types approach each other, we shall see

degeneracy. Men and women were never intended to be alike.

Thus we might go on. Without the radicals there would of course be no progress. Without the conservatives our

social fabric would scarcely hold. Between the two extremes, however, in this as in all things, stands the great middle
class, believing and urging that not social upheaval, but better understanding of existing conditions, is the world remedy
for unrest; that not new careers, but better adjustment of old ones, will bring peace; that not formal political power,
even though that be their just due, but the better use of powers that women have long possessed, is most needed for the
betterment of mankind.

It is not the province of this book to enter into controversy with either radical or reactionary, but rather to search for

truth which may be used for adjusting to fuller advantage the relation of woman to society. First of all must be
recognized the fact that the "woman movement" deserves the thoughtful attention of every teacher or other social
worker, and indeed of every thoughtful man or woman. The movement can no longer be considered in the light of
isolated surface outbreaks. It is rather the result of deep industrial and social undercurrents which are stirring the whole
world.

In our study of the modern woman movement, which as teachers in any department of educational work we are

bound to make, the fact is immediately impressed upon us that home life has undergone marked changes. Conditions

once favorable to the existence of the home as a sustaining economic unit are no longer to be found. New conditions
have arisen, compelling the home, like other permanent institutions, to alter its mode of existence in order to meet them.

Briefly reviewing the causes which have brought about these changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial

revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times
the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and
general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children
grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the home, and for which, in part,
the home existed. The home, in those days, was the place where work was done.

With the invention of labor-saving machinery came an entire revolution in the place and manner of work. The father

of the family has been forced by this industrial change to follow his trade from the home workshop to the mechanically
equipped factory. One by one, many of the housewife's tasks also have been taken from the home. To-day the
processes of cloth making are practically unknown outside the factory. Knitting has become largely a machine industry.
Ready-made clothing has largely reduced the sewing done in the home. In the matter of food, the housekeeper may, if
she chooses, have a large part of her work performed by the baker, the canner, and the delicatessen shopkeeper. Even
the care of her children, after the years of infancy, has been partly assumed by the state.

The home, as a place where work is done, has lost a large part of its excuse for being. Among the poorer classes,

women, like their husbands, being obliged to earn, and no longer able to do so in their homes, have followed the work
to the factory. As a result we have many thousands of them away from their homes through long days of toil. Among
persons of larger income, removal of the home industries to the factory has resulted in increased leisure for the woman
—with what results we shall later consider. Practically the only constructive work left which the woman may not shift if
she will to other shoulders, or shirk entirely, is the bearing of children and, to at least some degree, their care in early
years. The interests once centered in the home are now scattered—the father goes to shop or office, the children to
school, the mother either to work outside the home or in quest of other occupation and amusement to which leisure
drives her.

Photograph by Brown Bros.

Glove making. Women, like their husbands, have followed work to the
factories

A second change in the conditions affecting home life is found in the increased educational aspirations of women.

Once the accepted and frankly anticipated career for a woman was marriage and the making of a home. Her education
was centered upon this end. To-day all this is changed. A girl claims, and is quite free to obtain, an education in all
points like her brother's, and the career she plans and prepares for may be almost anything he contemplates. She may,
or may not, enter upon the career for which she prepares. Marriage may—often does—interfere with the career,
although nearly as often the career seems to interfere with marriage. Under the new alignment of ideals, there is less
interest shown in homemaking and more in "the world's work," with a decided feeling that the two are entirely
incompatible.

Keystone View Co.

Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory. Thousands of
women are away from their homes through long days of toil

The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no longer marries simply because no other career is

open to her; when she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us, to have children—the only remaining
work which, in these days, definitely requires a home. Marriage and homemaking, therefore, are no longer inseparably
connected in the woman's mind. Girls are willing to undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that
their "careers" are not to be interfered with. To them, then, marriage becomes more and more an incident in life rather
than a life work.

Photograph by Brown Bros.

A typical tenement house. Congestion means discomfort within the
home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or
social needs

A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost

without exception detrimental to home life. Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for
satisfying there either material or social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for satisfying these needs
outside the home. Family life under such conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of solidarity which
makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place where work is done, no longer the place where common
interests are shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or perhaps merely "where I sleep." The
great increase of urban life during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since the agricultural communities
constantly feed the towns, the menace concerns the country-as well as the city-dweller.

Photograph by Brown Bros.

In the cities there are increasing opportunities for satisfying material
and social needs outside the home

Believing that for the good of coming generations the true home spirit must be saved, we shall do well to admit at

once that the old-time home was an institution suited to its own day, but that we cannot now call it back to being. Nor
would we wish to do so. There is no possible reason for wishing our women to spin, weave, knit, bake, brew,
preserve, clean, if the products she formerly made can be produced more cheaply and more efficiently outside the
home.

There is danger, however, of generalizing too soon in regard to these industries. There is little doubt that in some

directions, at least, the factory method has not yet brought really satisfactory results. How many women can give you
reasons why they believe that it no longer "pays" to do this or that at home as they once did? Do the factories always
turn out as good a product as the housekeeper? If they do, does the housekeeper obtain that product with as little
expenditure as when she made it? If she spends more, can she show that the leisure she has thus bought has been a
wise purchase? Is she justified in accepting vague generalizations to the effect that it is better economy to buy than to
make, or should she test for herself, checking up her individual conditions and results?

The fact is that the pendulum has swung away from the "homemade" article, and most of us have not taken the

trouble to investigate whether we are benefited or harmed. It may be that investigation will show us that the pendulum
has swung too far, and that, in spite of factories mechanically equipped to serve us, some work may be done much
more advantageously at home. It is even possible, and in some lines of work we know that it is a fact, that homes may
be mechanically equipped at very little cost to rival and even to outclass the factory in producing certain kinds of
products for home consumption.

Spinning, weaving, and knitting are doubtless best left in the hands of the factory worker. But, under present

conditions, buying ready made all the garments needed for a family may be an expensive and unsatisfactory method if
the elements of worth, wear, finish, and individuality are worthy of consideration, just as buying practically all foodstuffs
"ready made" presents a complex and disturbing problem to the fastidious and conscientious housewife. There is at least
a possibility that it would be as well for the home of to-day to retain or resume, systematize, and perfect some of the
industries that are slipping or have already slipped from its grasp. It is possible to reduce some processes to a too
purely mechanical basis.

Keystone View Co.

Linen-mill workers. Spinning and weaving, whether of cotton,
linen, silk, or wool, are more satisfactorily done by factory
workers than in the home

A woman lived in our town who wasn't very wise.
She had a reputation for making homemade pies.
And when she found her pies would sell, with all her might and main
She opened up a factory, and spoiled it all again.

Nonsense? Yes—but with a strong element of sense, nevertheless.
Entirely aside, however, from the industrial status of the home, unless we are to see a practical cessation of

childbearing and rearing, homes must apparently continue to exist. No one has yet found a substitute place for this
particular industry. It is a commonly accepted fact that young children do better, both mentally and physically, in even
rather poor homes than in a perfectly planned and conducted institution. And we need go no farther than this in seeking
a sufficient reason for saving the home. This one is enough to enlist our best service in aid of homemaking and home
support.

From earliest ages woman has been the homemaker. No plan for the preservation of the home or for its evolution

into a satisfactory social factor can fail to recognize her vital and necessary connection with the problem. Therefore in
answer to the question "What ought woman to be?" we say boldly, "A homemaker." Reduced to simplest terms, the
conditions are these: if homes are to be made more serviceable tools for social betterment, women must make them
what they ought to be. Consequently homemaking must continue to be woman's business—the business of woman, if
you like—a considerable, recognized, and respected part of her "business of being a woman." Nor may we overlook
the fact that it is only in this work of making homes and rearing offspring that either men or women reach their highest
development. Motherhood and fatherhood are educative processes, greater and more vital than the artificial training that
we call education. In teaching their children, even in merely living with their children, parents are themselves trained to
lead fuller lives.

"The central fact of the woman's life—Nature's reason for her—is the child, his bearing and rearing. There is no

escape from the divine order that her life must be built around this constraint, duty, or privilege, as she may please to
consider it."[1] It is the fashion among some women to assume that it is time all this were changed, and that therefore it
will be changed. They look forward to seeing womankind released from this "constraint, duty, or privilege," and yet see
in their prophetic vision the race moving on to a future of achievement. The fact, however, ignore it as we may, cannot
be gainsaid: no man-made or woman-made "emancipation" will change nature's law.

It was well that after centuries of repression and subjection woman sought emancipation. She needed it. But the

wildest flight of fancy cannot long conceal the ultimate fact. Woman is the mother of the race. "The female not only
typifies the race, but, metaphor aside, she is the race."[2] Emancipation can never free her from this destiny. In the
United States, where woman has the largest freedom to enter the industrial world and maintain herself in entire
independence, the percentage of those who marry is higher than in the countries where woman is a slave. Ninety per
cent of the mature women in our country become homemakers for a certain period, and probably over 90 per cent are

assistant homemakers for another period of years before or after marriage.

Any vocational counselor who fails to reckon first with the homemaking career of girls is therefore blind to the facts

of life. All education, all training, must be considered in its bearing on the one vocation, homemaking. The time will
come when the occupations of boys and men must likewise be considered in relation to homemaking, but that problem
is not the province of this book.

Women will bear and rear the children of the future, just as they have borne and reared the children of the past. But

under what conditions—the best or those less worthy? And what women—again, the best or those less worthy? Has
woman been freed from subjection, from an inferior place in the scheme of life, only to become so intoxicated with a
personal freedom, with her own personal ambition, that she fails to see what emancipation really means? Will she be
contented merely to imitate man rather than to work out a destiny of her own? We think not. When the first flush of
freedom has passed, the pendulum will turn again and woman will find a truer place than she knows now or has known.

Two obstacles to the successful pursuit of her ultimate vocation stand prominently before the young woman of to-

day: first, the instruction of the times has imbued her with too little respect for her calling; second, her education teaches
her how to do almost everything except how to follow this calling in the scientific spirit of the day. She may scorn
housework as drudgery, but no voice is raised to show her that it may be made something else. With the advent of
vocational guidance, vocational training of necessity follows close behind. And with vocational training must come a
proper appreciation, among the other businesses of life, of this "business of being a woman."

Must we then educate the girl to be a homemaker, and keep her out of the industrial life which has claimed her so

swiftly and in which she has found so much of her emancipation? No, we could not, if we would, keep her from the
outside life. We must rather recognize her double vocation and, difficult though it seem, must educate her for both
phases of her "business." She will be not only the better woman, but the better worker, because of the very breadth of
her vocational horizon.

Training for homemaking, then, must go hand in hand with training for some phase of industrial life. Vocational guides

must consider not only inclination and temperament, but physical condition and the supply and demand of the industrial
world. They will consider the girl not merely as an industrial worker, but as a potential homemaker. They will, therefore,
also study the effect of various vocations upon homemaking capabilities.

How then shall the teaching of this double vocation be approached? How shall we, as teachers of girls, make them

capable of becoming homemakers? How shall we make them see that homemaking and the world's work may go hand
in hand, so that they will desire in time to turn from their industrial service to the later and better destiny of making a
home? This book offers its contribution toward answering these questions.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ida M. Tarbell, The Business of Being a Woman.

[2] Lester F. Ward, Pure Sociology.

CHAPTER II

The Ideal Home

That we may understand, and to some extent formulate, the problem which we would have girls trained to solve, we

must of necessity study homes. What must girls know in order to be successful homemakers?

A historical survey of the home leads us to the conclusion that although times have changed, and homes have

changed, and indeed all outward conditions have changed, the spiritual ideal of home is no different from what it has
always been. The home is the seat of family life. Its one object is the making of healthy, wise, happy, satisfied, useful,
and efficient people. The home is essentially a spiritual factory, whether or not it is to remain to any degree whatever a
material one. "Home will become an atmosphere, a 'condition in which,' rather than 'a place where,'" says Nearing in his
Woman and Social Progress. "The home is a factory to make citizenship in," writes Mrs. Bruère.

But although this spiritual significance of home has always existed, we are sometimes inclined to overlook the fact.

Because conditions have changed, and because our external ideals of home have changed and are still changing, we fail
to see that the foundation of home life is still unchanged.

ToC

"I sometimes think that many women don't consciously know why they are running their homes," says Mrs.

Frederick, author of The New Housekeeping. We might add that many of those who do know, or think they know,
are struggling to attain to purely trivial or fundamentally wrong ideals. It seems wise, then, for us to face at the outset the
question "What is the ideal home?"

Keystone View Co.

An attractive living room in which there is that atmosphere of
peace so conducive to a happy family life

Laying aside all preconceived notions, and remembering that changes are coming fast in these days, let us look for

the ideals which may be common to all homes, in city or country, among rich or poor.

Photograph by Brown Bros.

A well-arranged kitchen forms an important part of the smoothly
running mechanism of the ideal home

First of all, the home must be comfortable, and its whole atmosphere must be that of peace. In no other way can the

tension of modern life be overcome. This implies order and cleanliness, beauty, warmth, light, and air; but it implies far
more. It means a home planned for the people who will occupy it, and so planned that father's needs, and mother's, and
the children's, will all be met. What does each member of the family require of the house? A place to live in. And that
means far more than eating and sleeping and having a place for one's clothes. There must be not only a place for
everything, but a place for everybody in the ideal house. The boys who wish to dabble in electricity, the girls who wish
to entertain their friends in their own way, the tired father who wishes to read his newspaper "in peace," the younger
children who want to pop corn or blow bubbles or play games, all must be planned for. There will be no room too
good for use, and no furnishings so delicate that mother worries over family contact with them. There will be a minimum
of "keeping up appearances" and a maximum of comfort and cheer. There will be little formal entertaining, but many

spontaneous good times. In addition to being comfortable, the ideal home must be convenient. There will be places for
things, and every appliance for making work easy.

Photograph by Brown Bros.

Contrast this old-fashioned kitchen with the modern one shown on
the opposite page

The ideal mother, who is the mainspring of the smoothly running mechanism of the ideal home, will be scientifically

trained for her position. Her "domestic science" will no longer be open to the criticism that it is not science at all, nor will
she feel that her business is unworthy of scientific treatment. Always she will keep before her the object of her work—
to make of her family, including herself, good, happy, efficient people. She will not be overburdened with housework,
for overworked mothers have neither time nor strength for the higher aspects of their work. She will know how to feed
bodies, but also how to develop souls. She will clothe her children hygienically, but she will teach them to value more
the more important vestments of modesty and gentleness and courtesy. She will require obedience, but, as their years
increase, the requirement will be less and less obedience to authority and more and more obedience to a right spirit
within.

Photograph by Brown Bros.

The wise mother will teach her children the true value of work by making
them wish to work with her

She will work for her children and will make them wish to work with her, teaching them the true value of work and

sacrifice. She will play with them, for their pleasure and development, and she will also play, in her own way, for her
own rejuvenation and her soul's good. She will study each member of her family as an individual problem, and,
abandoning forever the idea of pressing any child's soul into the mold that she might choose, will rather strive to aid its
growth toward its natural ideal. She will strive to hold and to be worthy of her children's confidence, that they may turn
to her in those times that try their souls. But she will always respect the personal liberty of either child or husband to live
his own life.

She will interest herself in the interests of husband and children, that she may remain a vital factor in their lives; and

she will make the home so delightful as to reduce to a minimum the scattering influences that tend to destroy home life.
She will weave intangible but indestructible ties of affection, holding all together and to herself. She will keep her interest
in the outside world, so that she may better prepare her children to live in it and may resist the narrowing influence of
her enforced temporary withdrawal. She will take some part in civic work and social uplift, and, when her years of child
rearing are ended, in the leisure of middle age she will return to the less circumscribed life of her youth, bending her
matured energies to the world's work.

The father of this ideal family will be first of all a man happy in his work. The plodding, weary slave to distasteful

labor can be ideal neither as husband nor as father. Overworked fathers are quite as impossible in our scheme as
overburdened mothers. In ideal conditions the father will have time, strength, and willingness to be more of a factor in
the home life than he sometimes is at the present time. More than that, his early education will have included definite
preparation for homemaking, so that his coöperation will be intelligent and therefore helpful. He will know more than he
does now about the cost of living and he will assist in making a preliminary division of the year's income upon an
intelligent basis. He will recognize the necessity for equipment for the homemaking business and will contribute his share
of thought and labor to improving the home plant.

He will be a companion as well as adviser to his boys and girls and will retain their respect and love by his

sympathetic understanding and his remembrance of the boy's point of view. In all his dealings with his children he will be
careful that interference with his comfort and convenience or the wounding of his pride by their shortcomings does not
obscure his sense of justice. He will be a student of child nature and will keep in view the ultimate good and usefulness
of his child. He will regard his fatherhood as his greatest service to the state.

Pals. The wise father will be companion as well as adviser to his
children

The children reared by this ideal father and mother in their ideal home will grow as naturally as plants in a well-cared-

for garden. With examples of courtesy and kindness, of cheerful work and health-producing play, ever before them in
the lives of their parents, they may be led along the same paths to similar usefulness. Their educational problems will be
met by the combined effort of teachers and parents, and natural aptitude as well as community needs will dictate the
choice of their life work.

That this ideal family is far removed from many families of our acquaintance merely proves the necessity of training

for more efficient homemaking, and indeed for a better conception of homemaking ideals and problems. If we are to
teach our girls and our boys to be homemakers, we must consider carefully what they need to know. If we are to
counteract the tendencies of the past two or three decades away from homemaking as a vocation, we must show the
true value of the homemaker to the community, and the opportunities which domestic life presents to the scientifically
trained mind.

Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained for homemaking instruction; and we may

pause here to notice that no homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to give the teacher true
knowledge of ideal homes. She must have seen such homes, or those which approximate the ideal. Perhaps she has

grown up in such a home. More probably she has not. If not, it must then necessarily follow that the lower have been
the ideals in the home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of other homes, and especially of
good homes. Her whole outlook may be changed by such contact; and with her outlook, her teaching; and with her
teaching, her influence.

If all girls grew up in ideal homes, it seems probable that homemaking would appeal to them quite naturally as the

ultimate vocation. Indeed, we know that many girls feel this natural drawing, in spite of most unlovely conditions in their
childhood homes. The task of mother, teacher, and vocational counselor (who may be either) in this matter is a
complicated one. Some girls are not fitted by nature to be homemakers. Some may with careful training overcome
inherent defects which stand in the way of their success. Some have the natural endowment, but have their eyes fixed on
other careers. Some have unhappy ideals to overcome. The fact, however, confronts us that at some time in their lives a
very large majority of these girls will be homemakers. It is the part of those who have charge of them in their formative
years to do two things for them: first, to train them so that they may understand the tasks of the homemaker and
perform them creditably if they are called upon; second, to teach all those girls who seem fitted for this high vocation to
desire it, and to choose it for at least part of their mature lives.

CHAPTER III

Establishing A Home

Certain very definite attempts are being made in these days to meet the evident lack of homemaking knowledge in the

rising generation. And since definiteness of plan lends power to accomplishment, we cannot do better than to analyze as
carefully as possible the various lines of knowledge required by the prospective homemaker in entering upon her life
work.

What are the problems of homemaking? And how far can we provide the girl with the necessary equipment to make

her an efficient worker in her chosen vocation?

Country life and city life are apparently so far removed from each other as to present totally different problems to the

homemaker and to the vocational educator of girls. And yet underlying the successful management of both urban and
rural homes are the same principles of domestic economy and of social efficiency. The principles are there, however
widely their application may differ. While we may wisely train country girls for country living, and city girls to face the
problems of urban life, we must not lose sight of the fact that country girls often become homemakers in the city and that
city girls are often found establishing homes in the country. Nor should we overlook the truth that some study of home
conditions in other than familiar surroundings will broaden the girl's knowledge and fit her in later life to make conditions
subservient to that knowledge.

Both rural and urban homemakers must be taught to appreciate their advantages and to make the most of them. They

must also learn to face their disadvantages and to work intelligently toward overcoming them.

The country homemaker has no immediate need of studying the problems of congestion in population which menace

the millions of city-dwellers. The country home has plenty of room and an abundance of pure air. Yet it is often true that
country homes are poorly ventilated and that much avoidable sickness results from this fact. The country home is often
set in the midst of great natural beauty, yet misses its opportunity to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense. Its very isolation
is sometimes a cause of the lack of attention to its appearance to the passerby.

The farmer's wife has an advantage in the matter of fresh vegetables, eggs, and poultry, but the city housekeeper has

the near-by market and finds the question of sanitation, the preservation of food, and the disposal of waste far easier of
solution.

The city housewife is often troubled in regard to the source of her milk supply; the country-dweller has plenty of fresh

milk, but frequently finds it difficult to be sure of pure water.

The country homemaker often lacks the conveniences which make housekeeping easier; the city woman is often

misled, by the ease of obtaining the ready-made article, into buying inferior products in order to avoid the labor of
producing.

The family in the farming community often has meager social life and lack of proper recreations; the city-dweller is

made restless and improvident by an excess of opportunities for certain sorts of amusement.

Thus each type of community has its own problems. But practically all of these problems fall under certain general

heads which both city and country homemakers should consider as part of their education. The present turning of

ToC